Social skills predictive of NAPLAN scores

Key academic enablers can affect the social and academic performance of children over the long term. These are things like the attitudes and behaviours of children – motivation, interpersonal skills and study skills – which facilitate participation in the classroom.

A Brisbane study involving 360 Year 3 and Year 5 students from 36 primary schools found that academic enablers were significant predictors of NAPLAN scores. These findings were based on teacher ratings*. The advantage here is that, teachers have many opportunities to evaluate students. So unlike most achievement tests, their conclusions are based on repeat observations of student performance over a length of time. Also, this allows teachers to screen for learning difficulties so that intervention if necessary, can take place early.

Interesting. Let’s take a look at other research that highlights the predictive relationship between a child’s social behaviour and their long term academic achievement:

The prosocial skills of Year 3 students strongly predicted the academic achievements in Year 8 – more so than Year 3 achievement test scores (Caprara et al., 2000)